November 10, 2021 • 38 mins
In August of 2011 in Svalbard, Norway, 17 year-old Horatio Chapple was fatally mauled by a polar bear while on an expedition with the British Schools Exploring Society, and many of his companions were also brutally attacked.We then travel over to northern Canada and hear of two attacks in 2018, one of which killed Aaron Gibbons who was defending his children, and the other attack killed Darryl Kaunak and left his two friends to protect his body from other polar bears as they waited to be rescued.And we round out talking about the most recent polar bear attack in August of 2021, which fortunately had no casualties (besides the bear).
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Disclaimer: This is not professional advice; Follow at your own risk.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, check out our website GetOutAlivePodcast.com and join us on Patreon (where you can now follow us for free)!
Support the show for free by leaving a 5-star review wherever you're listening, or on GoodPods or Podchaser (where we can respond to your comments).
You can find Ashley @TheAngryOlogist on Twitter and Nick still refuses to engage.
Thanks for listening!
Disclaimer: This is not professional advice; Follow at your own risk.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:15):
Welcome to episode thirteen of Get OutAlive. I'm your host, Ashley,
and I guess the resident animal expert, and I'm Nick and I'm hyped up
on Red Bull always always. Okay, So if you're listening last week,
then you know that this episode ispart one. I guess that's why we
committed too. So that's where we'redoing. Okay, yeah, part one
(00:37):
of polar bears, and then nextweek will be the polar bear interview with
our biologist, or if you're apatron at the five or fifteen dollars level,
you'll get it immediately after this episode. So that's that's that good intro.
All right, We're so so goodat this. We're also recording a
person again. I like it.I feel like we were definitely a we
got a good vibe going. We'rerecording together. I agree. This week
(01:00):
we're talking about polar bears, andhonestly, I feel like, of all
the animals that we've covered so far, I've found like the most stories for
polar bears. Well, I mean, whenever someone gets to type about polar
bear, it's just something everyone wantsto know about. Well it's not only
that, but the fact that prettymuch. If you're around them, they'll
try to get you. They don'tcare what you are. They just want
(01:21):
to eat meat pretty much. Imean that's the vibe I've gotten from the
stories. And we're going to tryto not go too much into like the
biology and different aspects of why attackshappened. Because our biologist covers that the
interview was great, it's a wholefifty minutes. So that's why we didn't
want to put them both in oneepisode because it'd be two hours at least.
(01:42):
And I do have a few stories, and we're going to see how
much time we have for all ofthem. But do you want to just
get into the first one? Always? All right? Actually, no,
we're not going to do that.Oh no, what are we doing?
You have polar bear facts for us? Oh my god. I researched,
guys. I did research this week. It took me all about six minutes.
So the fact that I haven't doneit before is not great. So,
(02:07):
Ashley, did you know polar bearsare actually black? I didn't know
that. Yeah, they have theirfur actually isn't even white. It's clear
they have see through fur. Whatbecause it's hollow? I meant, why,
like why the black skin in thehollow for black like retains heat and
(02:28):
white because it's hollow. Okay,cool, I have no idea the US
fact I gave the fact I don'thave details. But also I learned that
polar bears are classified as marine mammals, just like you know, whales or
dolphins porposes shit like that. Thatdid bow my mind. Yeah, no,
it's just it's a little weird tome that you know, it's a
(02:51):
it's a bear. I think wecovered in one of the episodes of that
bears that evolve from whales or it'spredicted that they did, so we're gonna
cut that out. So it's okay. So yeah, that's cool. You
know they're fucking they swim dog andthen can swim for days at a time.
That dude, that's just it's impressive. But that's just sad, Mike.
Can you imagine having to paddle forthree days to find a piece?
(03:14):
Wise, I can barely walk upthe stairs to go to work without being
like severely windowed. Okay, justbecause they're like crazy doesn't mean you have
to put yourself down like that.I mean, I will say to also
put myself down like I enjoyed this. This is a good time for me.
So this is really embarrassing and hardfor me to admit. So I
have a whole lass degree that tookme four years to get, okay,
(03:37):
specifically about wildlife, and I learnedlast year in twenty twenty. So I
applied for a job in Antarctica sickto study penguins. Well, no,
you're not about to say what you'reabout to say. I was gonna say
I couldn't go because of COVID.Well I thought you're gonna say, you
just learned that polar bears aren't inthe Antarctic. That is correct, That
(03:57):
is what I was gonna say.Oh, geography is not your thing.
I don't know how I went myentire life. I've loved animals forever,
and I don't know how no onetold me that they didn't live there.
You know about penguins, right,I'm familiar. Yeah, okay, you
know they're not in the North Pole, right. Well I learned that that
day too. Really, I'm noteven joking. I had no idea,
(04:18):
No way, I don't think wejust put this out. That's gonna it's
gotta kind of bust our credibility.A bit. Hey, I've never been
to Antarctica, so true that notmany people have, so that makes me
feel a little better. But yeah, it's definitely embarrassing. Can you imagine
if you went down to like theAntarctic and you brought like bear sprain shit
and our cors like what's up?They'd be like, we're not gonna attack
(04:43):
you. No, it's for thebears. Yeah, what do you mean
the orcos? No? No,I would love to try and spray orga
with bear spray. Just why that'sso me? I think it would try
to kill me, like you haveyou pissed off an orca? Like there's
no stopping them, like they're killingyou. I guess. Okay, so
my moms listens to this podcast,she's wont to fall. I love you,
(05:04):
Patty, Hey, Patty, Iwould like to put out there that
orcas have never killed a person inthe wild, and she has an irrational
fear of going into the ocean beingkilled by a killer whale. I don't
blame her completely. They are likethe most efficient hunters on the planet and
they're massive, Like even if onedidn't attack you, were just like accidentally
(05:24):
smacks it with tailor probably dead maybe. I mean, I don't know where
she's swimming. That there's Orca's nowhere. She just doesn't swim because she's afraid
of them and sharks, yeah,mostly killer whales. It's ridiculous. Anyways,
I want to swim with the oneday cool SeaWorld exists. Well,
not that you should go there.SeaWorld's bad. That's a whole other podcast.
I had to go to the medicalward of SeaWorld one time. Oh
(05:46):
my god, I forgot about this. Do you want to Is that a
story that also you would like toshare? Because I shared an embarrassing one,
very personal and upsetting. I gotattacked by mosquitoes. Yeah, and
like it got bad. Yeah,we're gonna do a whole bonus episo on
how Nick almost died from mosquito bites. We probably do a lot of episodes
on the Wizard almost died. Soanyways, I another fun fact I had
(06:08):
about polar Bears is that less thantwo percent of their hunts are successful.
That is impressive, said, Imean, they really need to like be
good at their job. Though.If they don't get a seal, they
might not see another seal for weeks. Well, yeah, that's probably why
less than two percent or successful?Because also, wow, okay, so
fun fact, I just misunderstood whatyou said that ninety eight percent successful.
(06:30):
I was like, wow, bearsare killing me. Say it. I'll
be honest, I have no idea. That's the end of the day.
I got red bull pumped in theveins. Less than two percent are successful?
Wow, So they don't like ninetyeight points something? Backtracking on that,
that really sucks. Yah, theyreally need to step that up.
That's why they're dying. Yeah,well, okay, well there's a lot
(06:50):
of reasons, and once again,our biologists will get into that, but
let's get into the story and stopspeculating about polar bears and also my mother's
fear of killer whals. Okay,another thing you should know about me if
you haven't listened to any other episodefor some reason, I'm not the best
at pronouncing people's names or places.Throw back to episode whatever it was the
(07:13):
beavers uh and belairus. Well,you're very condescending. It wasn't condescenari.
It was very kind saying and Iwas right. Anyways, So this story
takes place. My first story Ihave for you takes place in Norway,
there's some challenging names. I'm gonnado my best. I'm sorry in advance.
I really hope the first one's likespen just looking easy something stupid.
(07:34):
But I will say the other storiesI have are from like the Arctic Circle,
and there's some Inuit names yep thatI will definitely struggle with and I
feel really bad. But if Ican find a pronunciation on like Google,
I will put that into the podcast. If you are part of the Inuit
community and you listen to this podcast, please let us know and cretus on
the names and what correct us onthe names. Oh yeah, I would
(07:54):
love to be corrected on the nameslike you did with Belaris. You didn't
love that, No, I did. I So. It's August of twenty
eleven and a group of students fromBritain were on an expedition organized by the
British Schools Exploring Society the BSS.Because I don't want to say that mouthful
again, it was a youth charityand this whole expedition was supposed to take
(08:16):
place from July to late August oftwenty eleven. So they were camping near
the von Post Glacier on the islandof Spitsbergen, which is twenty five miles
or forty kilometers from the settlement calledLong Year Bion, which is the world's
northernmost settlement and largest inhabited area ofSvalbard, Norway. I'll accept that,
(08:37):
okay, thanks which is in theArctic Circle. So I just thought it
was funny that it's called Long Yearbian, like, damn, it's thank you,
I hope. So seventeen year oldHoratio Chapel got it named thank you
was I didn't name him Animas wasone of eighty people on the expedition,
and in the early morning of Augustfifth, he was camp with a group
(09:00):
of thirteen. So basically during thisbig group of eighty and then like broke
off into groups, yeah, liketwo or one day prior to this event,
they broke off into these smaller groups. So it was essentially eleven students
and then two instructors. Horatio sharedhis tent with Patrick Flinders, who was
sixteen and Scott Bentel Smith, whowas seventeen, and two major mistakes had
(09:24):
been made this night. They didnot have someone on a constant watch for
bears, which the biologist will tellyou, like is the thing that you
have to do if you're hiking andbear polar bear country, and their trip
wires they had set had not beenset up properly. So Richard Payne was
the leader of the expedition, andhe had told the parents that each child
would have a pen flare specifically forthe purpose of scaring off bears, and
(09:46):
then each camp would have a tripwireflare system as like an early warning system
if a bear was a trip itwhatever. However, Richard had changed the
trip wires from a fishing line toa heavy duty cord because the previous option
was quote going off too easily.Wow, that's kind of what you want.
He also said there was a shortageof stakes to attach the trip wires
(10:07):
to and a shortage of the triggerfor the device, so they were using
a safety pin as a trigger instead. Some short cuts were made. Yeah,
so the entire set they had theyjust said, fucker, will do
this instead. And so you knowhow I told you that every child was
supposed to have a pen flare yep. So that's what their parents were told.
And when they got there, theyrealized they didn't have enough for every
(10:28):
child. Nice, this is goodplanning, yep. So you can see
where this is going. And theyalso changed the formation of the camp sites
to make up for the lack ofmines, and Horatio's group had only three
mines instead of four. Not themines are like these flares, yeah,
yeah, yeah, they kind ofswitched between calling them flares in mind,
which they're not like throwing bouncy bettiesout there and bears are blown up.
(10:50):
No, definitely not, not inthis case at least. So it was
the perfect storm because a starving andemaciated polar bear found its way into the
camp then, and the bear approachedHoratio's tent first, and none of the
warning minds exploded. Good yep.After this whole scenario happened, the Norwegian
government was like someone dropped the ballhere and they were looking to press charges
(11:13):
on somebody because they were like alot of safety mistakes were made, yeah,
and this could have been prevented,and were there deaths of people involved
here We'll get to it, okay, but I'm going to talk about the
investigation throughout, because according to theinvestigation, which was mandated a month after
the attack, the polar bear hadripped open the tent on Horatio's side,
dragged him out and then mauled him. Now, Horatio's family disagrees with this
(11:37):
death for some reason, and I'veseen other accounts where people say like he
woke up in the morning, gotout of his tent, and the bear
charged him and knocked him down andkilled him. Yep, But the investigation
said that he was ripped out ofthe tent. So I'm just gonna go
with that because that's the most officialreport that I have. So Patrick Flinder's
dad is actually the one that givesus the most information about the attack.
(11:58):
And it's like kind of fucked up. No way, No, not in
the way that you think. Hesaid his son is lucky the polar bear
didn't see him first because he quote, he probably had more meat on him.
Gone, oh my god. DHe was like, yeah, I
don't know why I grabbed the otherkid first, because my kid, oh
Boyne's exactly. I was like JesusPatrick's dad. After killing Horatio, the
(12:24):
bear actually did grab Patrick by thehead and then by his arm, but
somehow Patrick managed to get away fromthe bear, and the bear also mauled
Scott the third boy, breaking hisjaw. Where the hell is everyone else?
Well, this happened really fast.I mean, like he had enough
time to pull a kid out maulhim to death. Yeah, grab another
one and then grab a third.Where are the instructors? Like, there's
(12:46):
gotta be people with guns on thestrip. Okay, wow, you're jumping.
You're jumping the gun. I'm angry. So at this point, Michael
Reid also known as Spike, butI'm gonna call him Michael. I don't
know, I just I only sawone once, so to call him like,
but like sorry, Michael, SpikeLee Spike Reed. So anyways,
he's one of the two instructors forthe smaller group, and he woke up
(13:07):
from his tent after hearing the attackhappened, grabbed his Mo Boy Mauser Car
ninety eight K guns. He grabbedthe rifle, which is the only rifle
they had in the entire group.Oh good, which is not great because,
as you'll learn in the next episodeno spoiler really, but like,
you should carry a gun with youif you're around polar bears at all times.
(13:30):
So he said. He took carefulaim at the bear as to not
hit any of the students. However, good start, he couldn't chamber around.
It was later revealed in the investigationthat this was because the gun's safety
was on good. So he hasno training on the gun that he is
supposed to be keeping the kids safewith. Well. I was gonna get
to this point later, but itcame out that they only had like four
(13:56):
chances to shoot the gun before theyleft, Like they didn't have any real
training on how to use these riflesbefore they were sent out to protect these
children. This is really good.I'm liking everything that's coming from this.
And you know what, this iswhat they get from being British. I'm
sorry they can't have any guns.This is why when he training, that's
why when he guns, that's whypeople need more guns. All right,
let's not, let's not. Wouldyou have that issue? No, because
(14:18):
now he used guns. So asMichael struggled to put a chamber round,
chamber round, I was gonna sayaround in the chamber. Yeah, you
said that, you've missed up coupletimes. So as Michael struggled, he
told other members of the group tostart firing their pen flares. And as
he said this, the bear waslike, hey, pal and turned its
attention to him, knocked him clearoff his feet and bit him in the
(14:39):
head. What the fuck? Yeah, I don't know. This bear was
age. Yeah, so Michael triedto gouge out the bear's eyes, but
it wasn't working, and lucky forhim, the bear was distracted by Andrew
Ruck, the other group leader,who was throwing rocks at it. The
bear then severely mulled Andrew and leftMichael behind. How however, this gave
(15:00):
Michael enough time to properly load thegun finally shot the bear in the head.
Nice. Horatio obviously died, butall the other boys are rushed to
the hospital and Patrick specifically needed someof the bear's teeth removed from his scalp.
Good good, And yeah, Scottwas treated for his smash teeth and
his broken job. But yeah.So basically, the investigation that happened after
(15:22):
the death of Horatio concluded that alack of safety procedures and training on BSS's
half was like the reason that Horatiodied. However, they didn't like no
one was prosecuted for it because technicallythey didn't break any laws, and they
said that the students would have beensafer had they been camping in cabins rather
than just tense. Well, yeah, but that's not a law there so
(15:45):
they couldn't. Like I feel like, I don't know what the law systems
are like, you know in Englandand Norway. Norway, well yeah,
but they're from England. But itwas the crime. The crime, like
the civil suits if it was inthe mayor would have been severe. I
guess maybe the financial conversation would havebeen ridiculous, which that's true. Yeah,
(16:06):
it's nothing like. I'd much rathersee someone written jae for ours of
life if there was. My kiddied because they didn't know how to shoot
a gun. But hey, whatmakes it? I mean, it's awful
either way. But what makes itworse is Horatio had this dream of becoming
a doctor. It gets worse,and he wanted to find a cure for
type one diabetes. Oh Horatio,which his youngest brother, Magnus has Magnus
(16:27):
Magnus, which is also the nameof the bear that I rescued. No,
shit, isn't it weird? Idon't realize that it comes around.
We live in a simulation, wetruly do. Okay a sidebar, I
swear to God after every episode wecover, some weird news comes out about
either the animal or have some personalexperience with the animal. Like when we
(16:48):
covered the Otter family Grizzly attack,I was driving behind somebody that had an
Otter Grizzly plate or oh my god, an Otter license plate. And then
right after the beaver episode, yeah, some guy got attacked a week after
that, which was bananas. Andthen like a few days after the feral
swine episode, one was spotted inNew Hampshire, which is like a huge
deal. Yep, well like milesfrom her house. Yeah, super close.
(17:12):
Yes, very strange. So backto Horatio and this whole polar bear
story. Following Horatio's death, agarden was made called Horatio's Garden as an
outside area for patients at the Dukeof Cornwall Spinal Treatment Center in Salisbury,
where his father was a surgeon.And it was actually Horatio's idea before he
died, because he had gone andlike, I don't know, done some
(17:33):
work there, just like hung outthere. Was like, oh hey dad,
this is depressing and shit, that'sme of garden. Yeah, and
they did after him. Oh man, how sad, poor kid. I
know, the whole situation sucked.Yeah. That was like probably the craziest
polar bear attack story I could findbecause it attacked so many people, like
basically thirteen people. Yeah, likeand for the group, if it could
get you, like it was gonnaget you. Yeah. And there's kind
(17:56):
of some other stories I have ina similar vein to that. So we're
gonna go to Nunavut. It's nu n Avut. I hope it's right,
and it is in Canada, sick. There's two attacks that happened in
twenty eighteen, both in this onetown, both in this area, this
general area on the west coast ofHudson Bay. Aaron Gibbons, who was
(18:18):
thirty one, I said, Gibbons, that just made me think of Ghibbey
for my Curly. All right,Well it wasn't Gibby for my carly,
but Aaron Gibbons no was unarmed whenhe encountered a bear on Century Island,
which was a popular hunting and fishingspot, which is ten kilometers outside of
the hamlet. So he was actuallywith his kids just like hiking, and
(18:41):
a polar bear just like completely rushedout and started to come for his family.
So he put himself in front ofhis children and it mauled him to
death. And that's kind of allthe I don't know why. But for
these polar bear stories, there's nota lot of first hand accounts given because
they kill you well, but there'sother people there, you know what I
mean, Like even the one thatjust we just talked about in Norway,
(19:03):
like total people survived. Yeah,and this community was only comprised of twenty
five hundred people. Damn so bighamlet. That's a big hamlet. So
this was in July of twenty eighteen, right that he was killed. Yep.
Now let's go to August of twentyeighteen, so one month later,
just one month later, in thesame area. This is where I'm going
(19:26):
to struggle with names. And I'mso sorry in advance, Leo. I
janggiyak. It's i jj a ng i a q. I can't even
like spell that in my head asyou were saying, yeah, I'm so
sorry, Leo. If I canfind a pronunciation on Google, I will
put it in. But he sayshe and two of his other friends,
(19:48):
Lauren Junior Utah and Darryl Connach kannak. I'll take it. It's ka u
nak. Like my favorite part ofthese names are like the relatively generic first
names, just like Leo Darryl.I don't know. So they were out
hunting on the shore of Hudson Bayand they had left two days earlier to
(20:11):
hunt caribou and narwal. Oh that'ssick. You know that narwals are real?
Right? Yeah, Okay, thereare some people who don't. Were
you want of these people? No, I've always known they're real. Yeah,
well, how dare I ask?I mean, I mean, that's
fair. I didn't know that polarbears weren't Antarctica so, and that penguins
weren't in the North Pole. Heyman, no one. And so as
soon as I said that to somebody, they were like, have you ever
(20:33):
seen a picture of a polar beareating a penguin? And I was like,
oh no, oh my god.In my head had just made sense.
But now that you mentioned it,no, yeah, they would have
a field. Admit. Maybe that'show we saved the polar bears and kill
all the penguins. I mean,not all of them. There's a lot
of pe No, some people havetalked about putting polar bears in Antarctica,
but it just wouldn't work. There'snot like floating ice down Antarca. So
I'm able to swim. It's alsoway colder and there's not enough yeah stuff,
(20:57):
so it wouldn't work anyways, It'sfine. So where in Canada now?
And uh so, basically, theseguys were having tea this morning on
the second day of their hunt,and they saw a polar bear and her
cub approaching their tents. Be reallycute, well at first, so Leo
(21:18):
says. He ran out of thetent and fired his rifle into the air
to scare them away, but themother bear ran at Laurent and bit him
in the head. Dude, thesebears keep going for headshots. I know.
Then it chased down Darryl, whowas running away like actively trying to
get away, and mauled him.And Leo said that he shot the bear,
the mother bear, with his rifle, but it jammed Oh no,
(21:41):
common theme, unfortunately, and hewent and got another rifle, shot the
mother and killed her. They hadmultiple These guys were good. They knew
how to use it. Also theywere Hunting's true. What sucks is the
cub also got shot. But yeah, what are you I I yeah,
it does suck, but I meanor small, you just killed this mom.
You're not going to raise it yeah, it had it's gonna hate.
(22:04):
Yeah. So basically Lauren and Leotried to perform first aid on Daryl,
but he was dead. The motherkilled him Jesus. They covered his remains
in a tarp, and this iswhere the story gets like a little bananas.
Yeah, so they were stuck.They for some reason were waiting like
(22:29):
to be rescued. I think maybebecause they couldn't transport his body somehow or
something. But basically Leo and Laurencedecided, like, we're not leaving his
body because it's gonna get eaten andthat sucks. So Leo said, in
the following days, they just huddlednext to their friend's body waiting for someone
to find them, and several otherpolar bears came to their what the fuck?
(22:49):
And he said, Leo that theyshot and killed every single bear that
came towards them. And he said, I will take all criminal responsibility for
every bear that we kill, butthey're not coming anywhere near you, Like,
yeah, that you just watched yourfriend get killed and you almost died,
like it was a pair of mileaway. You're taking a shot.
They sheltered in their boat until theywere rescued. A few days later and
(23:11):
they were spotted by a helicopter.I mean, what a slim chance though,
that a helicopter's going over you inthe artics site, you know,
if there was an active like searchparty going for them or I don't know.
See, that's the thing with thesepolar bear like there's a lot of
polar bear attack stories, but there'snot a lot of information given about the
attacks, if that makes sense.Basically, Leo said he and Laurence had
(23:33):
heard the aircraft and ran out tolike signal to them. So that's it
probably wasn't searching for them, becausehow were they supposed to know? Yeah,
because I mean maybe their families expectedthem home a certain day they didn't
come back, and it's like,oh shit, we live in the Arctic
Circle and our family aren't back.Maybe yeah, but they were only two
days into the hunt, so yeah, you're right. Yeah, So basically,
(23:56):
you know, they got the helicopter'sattention and they It took three men,
but they were able to carry Darryl'sbody back to the house copter and
the other two only suffered minor injuries. It was the second fatal attack that
summer by polar bears in that onearea, which is nuts. I think
one thing that's going to become prettyapparent. And the interview portion of this
episode is that they don't have alot of places to go. If you
(24:19):
know anything about global warming. They'rerunning out of sea ice, which is
where they hunt, so they comeon land for food, bump into people
because we're constantly going more places thanwe were before in settling, so more
and more of these attacks are happeningand we are easy prey. And one
happened in twenty twenty one. Ohshit, that's this year. That's this
(24:40):
year. Oh my god, itis November third of twenty twenty one,
folks. And this happened in Augustof twenty twenty one, a couples ago.
I know. It's a couple ofmonths, I know. And like
we weren't on the ball, wedidn't even do We need to be scared
in New Hampshire, and we needto be scared of the polar bear that
attacked three people in the Arctic Circle. Yeah, I know they can swim
watch jeeri'es out. Yeah, Imean they could swim a lot coastal states.
(25:02):
That is it's only a matter oftime. Part whale they're actually marine
mammals, so they might become anados. They basically have bloholes butthole but
yeah, okay, so anyways,once again, Nunavut. Oh my god,
this place is This place is Populawith polar bears that are angry.
All polar bears are angry from whatI've heard. But they're starving to death.
(25:22):
They're all starving, yeah, andvery warm. Please help them.
This guy's name was Elijah kernerk Elijahsaw a polar bear outside of his cabin
near San ohh boy, Sana.So much of this episode as me trying
to pronounce this Santa Rijacques. It'ss a n I r a j ak.
Yeah, that sounds good, tomake sure. And basically, he
(25:42):
had been told that there's a polarbear in the area, so he just
kind of like poked his head outsideto see if it was really a polar
bear and uh, it's sure asheck was and was real upset that he
showed up, basically because it leftits carcass and then just started bolting towards
him and Homer just like stuck hishead out the door. Yeah, and
the bear is like fuck no,yeah, you want do you want to
(26:04):
smoke. Yeah, and he triedrunning away. But polar bears can run
upwards of twenty miles an hour.And how fast is you, saying,
Bolt? Twenty four miles an hour? Is this top speed? I think?
Yeah, he's the fastest man inthe world. So good luck if
you're anyone but usained Bolt. Ohand me, you've never seen me run?
Yeah, because you can't anymore becauseyou have like a tear in your
hip. I'm quick when I needto be though, Okay, So anyways,
(26:26):
he was with two others, hispartner and his partner's sister in law,
so it was just like the classicstory of I don't need to outrun
the bears and you outrun the personnext to me, kind of Oh no,
wait, So they're in a cabinright, like whit I forget how
I said it earlier that he pokedhis head out of the cabin. Yep,
So I meant that like they weregoing to the cabin. They were
(26:48):
all out there on their way tohome. But he saw like it around
the corner of the house, sohe poked his head around just to there.
Yeah, it's what it ran afterthem, but they were on like
an ATV. Oh shit. So, yeah, he had been told earlier
in the day that one was around, but he kind of shrugged it off.
So as they arrived, it wasthere and it went after him.
(27:08):
It attacked Elijah, and there's nota lot of detail given once again on
like how the attack went, whatexactly happened, like how it attacked him,
or why it stopped. But afterit attacked him, it went after
his partner. And Elijah was onthe ground at this point and he was
just basically stuck there watching the polarbear rip apart his partner. He somehow
(27:29):
managed to stand up after being mulledby a polar bear and tried to go
over to help his partner, butthe bear went after him again, and
he tried to run around his ATV. It did not work, So he
said, this second attack, hecould hear its body parts go into him,
like he could feel its teeth punchingthrough his flesh and here it's pulling
(27:51):
at his hair and scalp off.It let him go and then started approaching
the other two again. It attackedhim three times in between attacked the other
So this bear really just did notlike him. I don't know what it
is, but basically at one ofthe time, after one of the times
he was attacked, he started toblack out, but was still trying to
(28:11):
distract the bear from attacking the otherwoman that was there. So his partner's
sister in law. Yeah, andhe said a similar thing to other people
that we've talked about who've been attackedby bears, like basically, feel them
piercing through you, but you don'tfeel a lot of the pain associated with
you in shock and exactly, yeah, because he was just focused on trying
to help the other two because hesaid they all have children and grandkids too.
(28:33):
You know. The bear came downon him one last time and he
felt its tooth go into his eye. Oh no, that is the worst
I can possibly imagine. I havean iphobia. And he said it must
have. It must have opened itsmouth and bit him on the neck because
he just blocked out. Oh yeah, so it's joh, went from like
(28:53):
his eyeball through his neck. Yeah. So he said after that, there
was just silence. He couldn't hearanything. So obviously this is after he
comes to you after being bitten inthe neck and the eyeball by a bear,
a polar bear the biggest bear thereis the largest land predator in the
world. And he said he couldn'thear anything. Yeah, and he basically
(29:14):
thought, oh, the other twoare dead obviously, yeah, But then
he heard a voice. It wasthe local reverend's wife happened to pass by,
and he raised his hand and shoutedthat he was all right and yeah,
and his partner called out that shewas also alive. So he was
like thrilled that they at least twoof them were okay, you know,
(29:37):
because it could have been a lotworse. So he said what happened next
was a blur, but essentially herealized that the next time he was conscious,
he was at like a health center, so they weren't very close to
a hospital. Then he blacked outagain and the next thing he remembers was
getting medveacked to eke liwitch alwit.Oh boy, it's i q A l
(29:59):
u I t. He said,you know, as he's being shifted between
all these places, he was justgoing in out of consciousness, and from
there he was taken to Ottawa.Okay, got that one, I know
what that's what that is. Andhe said that the other two remained behind
and Ikal the police then said thatthe bear was found dead near the cabin
and they don't know how. Nomembers of the community like bended together and
(30:21):
shot and killed it. Yeah,But what I don't understand is like did
the reverend's wife kill it and thenthey were rescued, Like that's the part
that's unclear. They would have hadto kill it, right, I don't
know immediately, We don't know whenthe bear left them, Like maybe he
was gonna come back the later dbecause you said they already had a carcass
that it left to go attack them. So maybe it went back to the
carcass and left their bodies there asthey were bleeding out, and the reverend's
(30:45):
like, oh shit, or theweabond's wife is like okay, when need
to get help, and everyone cameout with their guns and was like,
hey, let's go fuck up thisbear. Yeah, Elijah says afterwards.
I had this mindset where animals aren'tferal, they're not scary. If you
don't bother them, they will notbother you. I decided to go.
Look, if I didn't go,the bear wouldn't have seen me. That
is how it happened from what I'vegleaned. Basically, a lot of these
(31:07):
attacks happen when people try to approachthese like in any sort of way,
try to approach these bears. Becausethere's someone I forget where I read it,
but someone else was saying tourists arebecoming more of a thing up there
in the Arctic Circle because people wantto see polar bears, which makes sense
because they're so cool. And Iexperienced this when I went to Yellstone.
I'm sure you experienced it in Yosemite. People see bears and they're like,
(31:30):
let me get close to it andtake a picture with it or of it.
You're making a face because you've absolutelydone this. We're not going to
take you to the Arctic Circle.So where a lot of these incidents happen
is where tourists are like, oh, pull the bear and go to run
up and take pictures of it orwith it, and the bears like,
I'll literally bite your head off.And that's kind of what's happening. I
(31:51):
mean, obviously, we just talkedabout people who like lived in the well
the last three people lived there.Yeah, but even the first ones then
really go out searching for a bear. The bear came to their camp,
No, and what was awkward inthe Horatio case, Like the first story
that we talked about was they wereexcited to see polar bears and that next
day they were going to go likelooking for them, but they weren't a
glacier so that they had plenty ofspace, but they definitely wanted to see
(32:15):
them. And then one find out. Those are our four stories, but
at least in the last one everyonesurvived and kind of learned a lesson,
I guess, but which is don'tpoke your head around house still look for
a bear. Yeah, don't lookat them, just keep walking to them.
Yeah, just ignore them. Imean it just it sucks because we
(32:37):
want to save polar bears, butit seems they're extremely deadly. Yeah.
Yeah, if you're a patron ofours at the five or fifteen dollars level,
you can hear all about that rightnow in our interview with Danielle,
and if not, you will getit next Wednesday. But other than that,
I think that's a good stopping pointfor us. Yeah, I mean,
will definitely be a get into alot of stuff during an interview,
(33:00):
some interesting stuff to go over.These animals are scary, yeah, which
seems to be a common theme withall of our animal attack stories. Animals
are scary. Yeah, pretty much. Every time we have an episode come
out, someone in my life islike, I have a new phobia of
this animal that I didn't know wassupposed to be deadly like beavers. So
many people were like, I don'tever want to see a beaver again.
(33:20):
They're fat, man, Like Iwoul't want to fuck with the beaver in
the first place. Like, yeah, im yeah, anyways, that's all
I got. Do you have anyfinishing notes on polar bears? I feel
like you're not as hyped as youshould be for talking about a bear.
I fucking love bears. Like we'vebeen we've been going through the process here
of like going through stories and theeverything them trying na to freak out too
(33:42):
much. One thing I want totalk about. Well, first of all,
let's backtrack. Where do you stand, like, on a list of
your favorite bears? Where do polarbears land fourth? Wow? Yeah,
give us your list, Black Bear, grizzly bear, what keep on?
What's number three? It is?Really they're fucking adorable, are so fucking
(34:04):
I would have thought that you wouldhave loved polar bears because they're like massive,
and which is why I love theKodayak grizzly Bear because it is absolutely
ridiculously large. Black bear is yourfavorite. I think they're cute and stupid.
I feel like I can pretty Ifeel like I could cuddle one,
you know, like, Yeah,I mean like I'm not saying. I'm
not saying I'm right. I'm justlike I feel that way. I'm not
(34:25):
that my opinions, Ashley, Isay you were, I live in black
Bear country. That's it's something thatyou know. It's it's like a they
gets got a home field advantage inmy in my heart. Okay, good
to know. Yeah, I reallywould have thought polar Bears would have ring
tired. But it's a it's acompetitive list. Yeah, it's really not
fair, I understand. So,I mean brown Bears didn't make it,
(34:46):
and so I guess grizzly is kindof a form of brown Bear. Yeah.
Do you want to talk about Pisley'sNo, why, I don't know
enough. I mean, all youhave to say is that polar Bears and
grizzly Bears sometimes get it on.Well, yeah, their range doesn't overlap
(35:07):
a whole bunch, but I guessthey can hybridize. I don't know.
I don't think their offspring are fertilethough, which is a common thing with
hybrids, Like mules can have babies, they do it, which is wild.
Yeah. Also, this has nothingto do with anything that we're talking
about. Well besides animals. Didyou know that California condors they just found
that they can sexually reproduce. Idid know this because you told me.
(35:28):
Okay, we were together when Ifound out. Huh yeah, oh yeah,
I forgot. We're together a lot. But yeah, if you didn't
know and hear the news California condors, it was just found that one Actually
it was a long time ago.They were going through a data set and
we're doing some DNA testing and foundthat some eggs that had hatched had no
father. They were just entire TheDNA was exactly from the mom, which
(35:50):
is bananas. And I guess it'sbeen found before in like turkeys and chickens
and stuff, but never in asuper endangered bird, which is really cool.
Yeah. So now hopefully use thatin some way to get the numbers
back up. Yeah, but Californiacondors are doing pretty good good. Yeah,
yeah, I know that they're prettypretty popular in Arizona right now,
So that's always good to see.It's another animal I almost worked with.
(36:13):
Yeah, you almost did. Yeah, and then the pandemic happened again.
Yeah, and you didn't want tocome visit me in California, all right.
Cool. So it's been a greatepisode, folks. This is the
last one forever. Yeah, forever. Thank you so much for listening to
episode thirteen of Ghetto Live. Ifyou are a patron, you can get
episode thirteen point five right now,and if not, you can get it
(36:34):
next week. But either way,thanks. Hey, you guys are getting
three episodes three weeks in a row. Yeah, yeah, so we're back
to old schedule more or less madeit less for about a month, and
we're about at I Yeah, Ihave a very intensive new job that I
can't make an episode every week withor else side have no hair, which
was kind of also the reason wegot to go to two weeks my job,
(36:58):
Like, oh yeah that too.Yeah yeah. So anyways, thanks
for listening. Join us on patreondot com slash get out Alive and you
can get all the good fun stuffour fifteen dollars a month members just got
their gifts in the mail. Ilove to see pictures of people with the
things that we send them. It'sreally weird. It is weird. It's
really weird, like seeing my handwritingwith someone I've never met before feels weird,
(37:20):
but also I love it so much. So thank you so much for
that. To see the information andlinks for this episode, you can check
out the episode description below, orcheck out our website get at a Live
podcast dot com. You can rateus on Apple Podcasts and subscribe wherever you're
listening. You can follow us onInstagram I get out a Live pod,
and we also have a Facebook page, which I think is just get out
a Live Podcast. I think so. I haven't actually looked at it.
(37:42):
Yeah, I'll for it a longtime. That's where Nick will respond to
your questions and concerns and comments ifwe actually see it. I see them,
Oh, there we go. Ifas she tells me, I will
respond yeah. So. You canalso follow me on Twitter at the Angryologist
Nick Nope cool. So thank youto my second grade husband and best friend,
Josh Walsh for making our intro music. And we will see you either
(38:05):
right now for the second installment ofthis episode, or next week for our
interview with Danielle
Welcome to episode thirteen of Get OutAlive. I'm your host, Ashley,
and I guess the resident animal expert, and I'm Nick and I'm hyped up
on Red Bull always always. Okay, So if you're listening last week,
then you know that this episode ispart one. I guess that's why we
committed too. So that's where we'redoing. Okay, yeah, part one
(00:37):
of polar bears, and then nextweek will be the polar bear interview with
our biologist, or if you're apatron at the five or fifteen dollars level,
you'll get it immediately after this episode. So that's that's that good intro.
All right, We're so so goodat this. We're also recording a
person again. I like it.I feel like we were definitely a we
got a good vibe going. We'rerecording together. I agree. This week
(01:00):
we're talking about polar bears, andhonestly, I feel like, of all
the animals that we've covered so far, I've found like the most stories for
polar bears. Well, I mean, whenever someone gets to type about polar
bear, it's just something everyone wantsto know about. Well it's not only
that, but the fact that prettymuch. If you're around them, they'll
try to get you. They don'tcare what you are. They just want
(01:21):
to eat meat pretty much. Imean that's the vibe I've gotten from the
stories. And we're going to tryto not go too much into like the
biology and different aspects of why attackshappened. Because our biologist covers that the
interview was great, it's a wholefifty minutes. So that's why we didn't
want to put them both in oneepisode because it'd be two hours at least.
(01:42):
And I do have a few stories, and we're going to see how
much time we have for all ofthem. But do you want to just
get into the first one? Always? All right? Actually, no,
we're not going to do that.Oh no, what are we doing?
You have polar bear facts for us? Oh my god. I researched,
guys. I did research this week. It took me all about six minutes.
So the fact that I haven't doneit before is not great. So,
(02:07):
Ashley, did you know polar bearsare actually black? I didn't know
that. Yeah, they have theirfur actually isn't even white. It's clear
they have see through fur. Whatbecause it's hollow? I meant, why,
like why the black skin in thehollow for black like retains heat and
(02:28):
white because it's hollow. Okay,cool, I have no idea the US
fact I gave the fact I don'thave details. But also I learned that
polar bears are classified as marine mammals, just like you know, whales or
dolphins porposes shit like that. Thatdid bow my mind. Yeah, no,
it's just it's a little weird tome that you know, it's a
(02:51):
it's a bear. I think wecovered in one of the episodes of that
bears that evolve from whales or it'spredicted that they did, so we're gonna
cut that out. So it's okay. So yeah, that's cool. You
know they're fucking they swim dog andthen can swim for days at a time.
That dude, that's just it's impressive. But that's just sad, Mike.
Can you imagine having to paddle forthree days to find a piece?
(03:14):
Wise, I can barely walk upthe stairs to go to work without being
like severely windowed. Okay, justbecause they're like crazy doesn't mean you have
to put yourself down like that.I mean, I will say to also
put myself down like I enjoyed this. This is a good time for me.
So this is really embarrassing and hardfor me to admit. So I
have a whole lass degree that tookme four years to get, okay,
(03:37):
specifically about wildlife, and I learnedlast year in twenty twenty. So I
applied for a job in Antarctica sickto study penguins. Well, no,
you're not about to say what you'reabout to say. I was gonna say
I couldn't go because of COVID.Well I thought you're gonna say, you
just learned that polar bears aren't inthe Antarctic. That is correct, That
(03:57):
is what I was gonna say.Oh, geography is not your thing.
I don't know how I went myentire life. I've loved animals forever,
and I don't know how no onetold me that they didn't live there.
You know about penguins, right,I'm familiar. Yeah, okay, you
know they're not in the North Pole, right. Well I learned that that
day too. Really, I'm noteven joking. I had no idea,
(04:18):
No way, I don't think wejust put this out. That's gonna it's
gotta kind of bust our credibility.A bit. Hey, I've never been
to Antarctica, so true that notmany people have, so that makes me
feel a little better. But yeah, it's definitely embarrassing. Can you imagine
if you went down to like theAntarctic and you brought like bear sprain shit
and our cors like what's up?They'd be like, we're not gonna attack
(04:43):
you. No, it's for thebears. Yeah, what do you mean
the orcos? No? No,I would love to try and spray orga
with bear spray. Just why that'sso me? I think it would try
to kill me, like you haveyou pissed off an orca? Like there's
no stopping them, like they're killingyou. I guess. Okay, so
my moms listens to this podcast,she's wont to fall. I love you,
(05:04):
Patty, Hey, Patty, Iwould like to put out there that
orcas have never killed a person inthe wild, and she has an irrational
fear of going into the ocean beingkilled by a killer whale. I don't
blame her completely. They are likethe most efficient hunters on the planet and
they're massive, Like even if onedidn't attack you, were just like accidentally
(05:24):
smacks it with tailor probably dead maybe. I mean, I don't know where
she's swimming. That there's Orca's nowhere. She just doesn't swim because she's afraid
of them and sharks, yeah,mostly killer whales. It's ridiculous. Anyways,
I want to swim with the oneday cool SeaWorld exists. Well,
not that you should go there.SeaWorld's bad. That's a whole other podcast.
I had to go to the medicalward of SeaWorld one time. Oh
(05:46):
my god, I forgot about this. Do you want to Is that a
story that also you would like toshare? Because I shared an embarrassing one,
very personal and upsetting. I gotattacked by mosquitoes. Yeah, and
like it got bad. Yeah,we're gonna do a whole bonus episo on
how Nick almost died from mosquito bites. We probably do a lot of episodes
on the Wizard almost died. Soanyways, I another fun fact I had
(06:08):
about polar Bears is that less thantwo percent of their hunts are successful.
That is impressive, said, Imean, they really need to like be
good at their job. Though.If they don't get a seal, they
might not see another seal for weeks. Well, yeah, that's probably why
less than two percent or successful?Because also, wow, okay, so
fun fact, I just misunderstood whatyou said that ninety eight percent successful.
(06:30):
I was like, wow, bearsare killing me. Say it. I'll
be honest, I have no idea. That's the end of the day.
I got red bull pumped in theveins. Less than two percent are successful?
Wow, So they don't like ninetyeight points something? Backtracking on that,
that really sucks. Yah, theyreally need to step that up.
That's why they're dying. Yeah,well, okay, well there's a lot
(06:50):
of reasons, and once again,our biologists will get into that, but
let's get into the story and stopspeculating about polar bears and also my mother's
fear of killer whals. Okay,another thing you should know about me if
you haven't listened to any other episodefor some reason, I'm not the best
at pronouncing people's names or places.Throw back to episode whatever it was the
(07:13):
beavers uh and belairus. Well,you're very condescending. It wasn't condescenari.
It was very kind saying and Iwas right. Anyways, So this story
takes place. My first story Ihave for you takes place in Norway,
there's some challenging names. I'm gonnado my best. I'm sorry in advance.
I really hope the first one's likespen just looking easy something stupid.
(07:34):
But I will say the other storiesI have are from like the Arctic Circle,
and there's some Inuit names yep thatI will definitely struggle with and I
feel really bad. But if Ican find a pronunciation on like Google,
I will put that into the podcast. If you are part of the Inuit
community and you listen to this podcast, please let us know and cretus on
the names and what correct us onthe names. Oh yeah, I would
(07:54):
love to be corrected on the nameslike you did with Belaris. You didn't
love that, No, I did. I So. It's August of twenty
eleven and a group of students fromBritain were on an expedition organized by the
British Schools Exploring Society the BSS.Because I don't want to say that mouthful
again, it was a youth charityand this whole expedition was supposed to take
(08:16):
place from July to late August oftwenty eleven. So they were camping near
the von Post Glacier on the islandof Spitsbergen, which is twenty five miles
or forty kilometers from the settlement calledLong Year Bion, which is the world's
northernmost settlement and largest inhabited area ofSvalbard, Norway. I'll accept that,
(08:37):
okay, thanks which is in theArctic Circle. So I just thought it
was funny that it's called Long Yearbian, like, damn, it's thank you,
I hope. So seventeen year oldHoratio Chapel got it named thank you
was I didn't name him Animas wasone of eighty people on the expedition,
and in the early morning of Augustfifth, he was camp with a group
(09:00):
of thirteen. So basically during thisbig group of eighty and then like broke
off into groups, yeah, liketwo or one day prior to this event,
they broke off into these smaller groups. So it was essentially eleven students
and then two instructors. Horatio sharedhis tent with Patrick Flinders, who was
sixteen and Scott Bentel Smith, whowas seventeen, and two major mistakes had
(09:24):
been made this night. They didnot have someone on a constant watch for
bears, which the biologist will tellyou, like is the thing that you
have to do if you're hiking andbear polar bear country, and their trip
wires they had set had not beenset up properly. So Richard Payne was
the leader of the expedition, andhe had told the parents that each child
would have a pen flare specifically forthe purpose of scaring off bears, and
(09:46):
then each camp would have a tripwireflare system as like an early warning system
if a bear was a trip itwhatever. However, Richard had changed the
trip wires from a fishing line toa heavy duty cord because the previous option
was quote going off too easily.Wow, that's kind of what you want.
He also said there was a shortageof stakes to attach the trip wires
(10:07):
to and a shortage of the triggerfor the device, so they were using
a safety pin as a trigger instead. Some short cuts were made. Yeah,
so the entire set they had theyjust said, fucker, will do
this instead. And so you knowhow I told you that every child was
supposed to have a pen flare yep. So that's what their parents were told.
And when they got there, theyrealized they didn't have enough for every
(10:28):
child. Nice, this is goodplanning, yep. So you can see
where this is going. And theyalso changed the formation of the camp sites
to make up for the lack ofmines, and Horatio's group had only three
mines instead of four. Not themines are like these flares, yeah,
yeah, yeah, they kind ofswitched between calling them flares in mind,
which they're not like throwing bouncy bettiesout there and bears are blown up.
(10:50):
No, definitely not, not inthis case at least. So it was
the perfect storm because a starving andemaciated polar bear found its way into the
camp then, and the bear approachedHoratio's tent first, and none of the
warning minds exploded. Good yep.After this whole scenario happened, the Norwegian
government was like someone dropped the ballhere and they were looking to press charges
(11:13):
on somebody because they were like alot of safety mistakes were made, yeah,
and this could have been prevented,and were there deaths of people involved
here We'll get to it, okay, but I'm going to talk about the
investigation throughout, because according to theinvestigation, which was mandated a month after
the attack, the polar bear hadripped open the tent on Horatio's side,
dragged him out and then mauled him. Now, Horatio's family disagrees with this
(11:37):
death for some reason, and I'veseen other accounts where people say like he
woke up in the morning, gotout of his tent, and the bear
charged him and knocked him down andkilled him. Yep, But the investigation
said that he was ripped out ofthe tent. So I'm just gonna go
with that because that's the most officialreport that I have. So Patrick Flinder's
dad is actually the one that givesus the most information about the attack.
(11:58):
And it's like kind of fucked up. No way, No, not in
the way that you think. Hesaid his son is lucky the polar bear
didn't see him first because he quote, he probably had more meat on him.
Gone, oh my god. DHe was like, yeah, I
don't know why I grabbed the otherkid first, because my kid, oh
Boyne's exactly. I was like JesusPatrick's dad. After killing Horatio, the
(12:24):
bear actually did grab Patrick by thehead and then by his arm, but
somehow Patrick managed to get away fromthe bear, and the bear also mauled
Scott the third boy, breaking hisjaw. Where the hell is everyone else?
Well, this happened really fast.I mean, like he had enough
time to pull a kid out maulhim to death. Yeah, grab another
one and then grab a third.Where are the instructors? Like, there's
(12:46):
gotta be people with guns on thestrip. Okay, wow, you're jumping.
You're jumping the gun. I'm angry. So at this point, Michael
Reid also known as Spike, butI'm gonna call him Michael. I don't
know, I just I only sawone once, so to call him like,
but like sorry, Michael, SpikeLee Spike Reed. So anyways,
he's one of the two instructors forthe smaller group, and he woke up
(13:07):
from his tent after hearing the attackhappened, grabbed his Mo Boy Mauser Car
ninety eight K guns. He grabbedthe rifle, which is the only rifle
they had in the entire group.Oh good, which is not great because,
as you'll learn in the next episodeno spoiler really, but like,
you should carry a gun with youif you're around polar bears at all times.
(13:30):
So he said. He took carefulaim at the bear as to not
hit any of the students. However, good start, he couldn't chamber around.
It was later revealed in the investigationthat this was because the gun's safety
was on good. So he hasno training on the gun that he is
supposed to be keeping the kids safewith. Well. I was gonna get
to this point later, but itcame out that they only had like four
(13:56):
chances to shoot the gun before theyleft, Like they didn't have any real
training on how to use these riflesbefore they were sent out to protect these
children. This is really good.I'm liking everything that's coming from this.
And you know what, this iswhat they get from being British. I'm
sorry they can't have any guns.This is why when he training, that's
why when he guns, that's whypeople need more guns. All right,
let's not, let's not. Wouldyou have that issue? No, because
(14:18):
now he used guns. So asMichael struggled to put a chamber round,
chamber round, I was gonna sayaround in the chamber. Yeah, you
said that, you've missed up coupletimes. So as Michael struggled, he
told other members of the group tostart firing their pen flares. And as
he said this, the bear waslike, hey, pal and turned its
attention to him, knocked him clearoff his feet and bit him in the
(14:39):
head. What the fuck? Yeah, I don't know. This bear was
age. Yeah, so Michael triedto gouge out the bear's eyes, but
it wasn't working, and lucky forhim, the bear was distracted by Andrew
Ruck, the other group leader,who was throwing rocks at it. The
bear then severely mulled Andrew and leftMichael behind. How however, this gave
(15:00):
Michael enough time to properly load thegun finally shot the bear in the head.
Nice. Horatio obviously died, butall the other boys are rushed to
the hospital and Patrick specifically needed someof the bear's teeth removed from his scalp.
Good good, And yeah, Scottwas treated for his smash teeth and
his broken job. But yeah.So basically, the investigation that happened after
(15:22):
the death of Horatio concluded that alack of safety procedures and training on BSS's
half was like the reason that Horatiodied. However, they didn't like no
one was prosecuted for it because technicallythey didn't break any laws, and they
said that the students would have beensafer had they been camping in cabins rather
than just tense. Well, yeah, but that's not a law there so
(15:45):
they couldn't. Like I feel like, I don't know what the law systems
are like, you know in Englandand Norway. Norway, well yeah,
but they're from England. But itwas the crime. The crime, like
the civil suits if it was inthe mayor would have been severe. I
guess maybe the financial conversation would havebeen ridiculous, which that's true. Yeah,
(16:06):
it's nothing like. I'd much rathersee someone written jae for ours of
life if there was. My kiddied because they didn't know how to shoot
a gun. But hey, whatmakes it? I mean, it's awful
either way. But what makes itworse is Horatio had this dream of becoming
a doctor. It gets worse,and he wanted to find a cure for
type one diabetes. Oh Horatio,which his youngest brother, Magnus has Magnus
(16:27):
Magnus, which is also the nameof the bear that I rescued. No,
shit, isn't it weird? Idon't realize that it comes around.
We live in a simulation, wetruly do. Okay a sidebar, I
swear to God after every episode wecover, some weird news comes out about
either the animal or have some personalexperience with the animal. Like when we
(16:48):
covered the Otter family Grizzly attack,I was driving behind somebody that had an
Otter Grizzly plate or oh my god, an Otter license plate. And then
right after the beaver episode, yeah, some guy got attacked a week after
that, which was bananas. Andthen like a few days after the feral
swine episode, one was spotted inNew Hampshire, which is like a huge
deal. Yep, well like milesfrom her house. Yeah, super close.
(17:12):
Yes, very strange. So backto Horatio and this whole polar bear
story. Following Horatio's death, agarden was made called Horatio's Garden as an
outside area for patients at the Dukeof Cornwall Spinal Treatment Center in Salisbury,
where his father was a surgeon.And it was actually Horatio's idea before he
died, because he had gone andlike, I don't know, done some
(17:33):
work there, just like hung outthere. Was like, oh hey dad,
this is depressing and shit, that'sme of garden. Yeah, and
they did after him. Oh man, how sad, poor kid. I
know, the whole situation sucked.Yeah. That was like probably the craziest
polar bear attack story I could findbecause it attacked so many people, like
basically thirteen people. Yeah, likeand for the group, if it could
get you, like it was gonnaget you. Yeah. And there's kind
(17:56):
of some other stories I have ina similar vein to that. So we're
gonna go to Nunavut. It's nu n Avut. I hope it's right,
and it is in Canada, sick. There's two attacks that happened in
twenty eighteen, both in this onetown, both in this area, this
general area on the west coast ofHudson Bay. Aaron Gibbons, who was
(18:18):
thirty one, I said, Gibbons, that just made me think of Ghibbey
for my Curly. All right,Well it wasn't Gibby for my carly,
but Aaron Gibbons no was unarmed whenhe encountered a bear on Century Island,
which was a popular hunting and fishingspot, which is ten kilometers outside of
the hamlet. So he was actuallywith his kids just like hiking, and
(18:41):
a polar bear just like completely rushedout and started to come for his family.
So he put himself in front ofhis children and it mauled him to
death. And that's kind of allthe I don't know why. But for
these polar bear stories, there's nota lot of first hand accounts given because
they kill you well, but there'sother people there, you know what I
mean, Like even the one thatjust we just talked about in Norway,
(19:03):
like total people survived. Yeah,and this community was only comprised of twenty
five hundred people. Damn so bighamlet. That's a big hamlet. So
this was in July of twenty eighteen, right that he was killed. Yep.
Now let's go to August of twentyeighteen, so one month later,
just one month later, in thesame area. This is where I'm going
(19:26):
to struggle with names. And I'mso sorry in advance, Leo. I
janggiyak. It's i jj a ng i a q. I can't even
like spell that in my head asyou were saying, yeah, I'm so
sorry, Leo. If I canfind a pronunciation on Google, I will
put it in. But he sayshe and two of his other friends,
(19:48):
Lauren Junior Utah and Darryl Connach kannak. I'll take it. It's ka u
nak. Like my favorite part ofthese names are like the relatively generic first
names, just like Leo Darryl.I don't know. So they were out
hunting on the shore of Hudson Bayand they had left two days earlier to
(20:11):
hunt caribou and narwal. Oh that'ssick. You know that narwals are real?
Right? Yeah, Okay, thereare some people who don't. Were
you want of these people? No, I've always known they're real. Yeah,
well, how dare I ask?I mean, I mean, that's
fair. I didn't know that polarbears weren't Antarctica so, and that penguins
weren't in the North Pole. Heyman, no one. And so as
soon as I said that to somebody, they were like, have you ever
(20:33):
seen a picture of a polar beareating a penguin? And I was like,
oh no, oh my god.In my head had just made sense.
But now that you mentioned it,no, yeah, they would have
a field. Admit. Maybe that'show we saved the polar bears and kill
all the penguins. I mean,not all of them. There's a lot
of pe No, some people havetalked about putting polar bears in Antarctica,
but it just wouldn't work. There'snot like floating ice down Antarca. So
I'm able to swim. It's alsoway colder and there's not enough yeah stuff,
(20:57):
so it wouldn't work anyways, It'sfine. So where in Canada now?
And uh so, basically, theseguys were having tea this morning on
the second day of their hunt,and they saw a polar bear and her
cub approaching their tents. Be reallycute, well at first, so Leo
(21:18):
says. He ran out of thetent and fired his rifle into the air
to scare them away, but themother bear ran at Laurent and bit him
in the head. Dude, thesebears keep going for headshots. I know.
Then it chased down Darryl, whowas running away like actively trying to
get away, and mauled him.And Leo said that he shot the bear,
the mother bear, with his rifle, but it jammed Oh no,
(21:41):
common theme, unfortunately, and hewent and got another rifle, shot the
mother and killed her. They hadmultiple These guys were good. They knew
how to use it. Also theywere Hunting's true. What sucks is the
cub also got shot. But yeah, what are you I I yeah,
it does suck, but I meanor small, you just killed this mom.
You're not going to raise it yeah, it had it's gonna hate.
(22:04):
Yeah. So basically Lauren and Leotried to perform first aid on Daryl,
but he was dead. The motherkilled him Jesus. They covered his remains
in a tarp, and this iswhere the story gets like a little bananas.
Yeah, so they were stuck.They for some reason were waiting like
(22:29):
to be rescued. I think maybebecause they couldn't transport his body somehow or
something. But basically Leo and Laurencedecided, like, we're not leaving his
body because it's gonna get eaten andthat sucks. So Leo said, in
the following days, they just huddlednext to their friend's body waiting for someone
to find them, and several otherpolar bears came to their what the fuck?
(22:49):
And he said, Leo that theyshot and killed every single bear that
came towards them. And he said, I will take all criminal responsibility for
every bear that we kill, butthey're not coming anywhere near you, Like,
yeah, that you just watched yourfriend get killed and you almost died,
like it was a pair of mileaway. You're taking a shot.
They sheltered in their boat until theywere rescued. A few days later and
(23:11):
they were spotted by a helicopter.I mean, what a slim chance though,
that a helicopter's going over you inthe artics site, you know,
if there was an active like searchparty going for them or I don't know.
See, that's the thing with thesepolar bear like there's a lot of
polar bear attack stories, but there'snot a lot of information given about the
attacks, if that makes sense.Basically, Leo said he and Laurence had
(23:33):
heard the aircraft and ran out tolike signal to them. So that's it
probably wasn't searching for them, becausehow were they supposed to know? Yeah,
because I mean maybe their families expectedthem home a certain day they didn't
come back, and it's like,oh shit, we live in the Arctic
Circle and our family aren't back.Maybe yeah, but they were only two
days into the hunt, so yeah, you're right. Yeah, So basically,
(23:56):
you know, they got the helicopter'sattention and they It took three men,
but they were able to carry Darryl'sbody back to the house copter and
the other two only suffered minor injuries. It was the second fatal attack that
summer by polar bears in that onearea, which is nuts. I think
one thing that's going to become prettyapparent. And the interview portion of this
episode is that they don't have alot of places to go. If you
(24:19):
know anything about global warming. They'rerunning out of sea ice, which is
where they hunt, so they comeon land for food, bump into people
because we're constantly going more places thanwe were before in settling, so more
and more of these attacks are happeningand we are easy prey. And one
happened in twenty twenty one. Ohshit, that's this year. That's this
(24:40):
year. Oh my god, itis November third of twenty twenty one,
folks. And this happened in Augustof twenty twenty one, a couples ago.
I know. It's a couple ofmonths, I know. And like
we weren't on the ball, wedidn't even do We need to be scared
in New Hampshire, and we needto be scared of the polar bear that
attacked three people in the Arctic Circle. Yeah, I know they can swim
watch jeeri'es out. Yeah, Imean they could swim a lot coastal states.
(25:02):
That is it's only a matter oftime. Part whale they're actually marine
mammals, so they might become anados. They basically have bloholes butthole but
yeah, okay, so anyways,once again, Nunavut. Oh my god,
this place is This place is Populawith polar bears that are angry.
All polar bears are angry from whatI've heard. But they're starving to death.
(25:22):
They're all starving, yeah, andvery warm. Please help them.
This guy's name was Elijah kernerk Elijahsaw a polar bear outside of his cabin
near San ohh boy, Sana.So much of this episode as me trying
to pronounce this Santa Rijacques. It'ss a n I r a j ak.
Yeah, that sounds good, tomake sure. And basically, he
(25:42):
had been told that there's a polarbear in the area, so he just
kind of like poked his head outsideto see if it was really a polar
bear and uh, it's sure asheck was and was real upset that he
showed up, basically because it leftits carcass and then just started bolting towards
him and Homer just like stuck hishead out the door. Yeah, and
the bear is like fuck no,yeah, you want do you want to
(26:04):
smoke. Yeah, and he triedrunning away. But polar bears can run
upwards of twenty miles an hour.And how fast is you, saying,
Bolt? Twenty four miles an hour? Is this top speed? I think?
Yeah, he's the fastest man inthe world. So good luck if
you're anyone but usained Bolt. Ohand me, you've never seen me run?
Yeah, because you can't anymore becauseyou have like a tear in your
hip. I'm quick when I needto be though, Okay, So anyways,
(26:26):
he was with two others, hispartner and his partner's sister in law,
so it was just like the classicstory of I don't need to outrun
the bears and you outrun the personnext to me, kind of Oh no,
wait, So they're in a cabinright, like whit I forget how
I said it earlier that he pokedhis head out of the cabin. Yep,
So I meant that like they weregoing to the cabin. They were
(26:48):
all out there on their way tohome. But he saw like it around
the corner of the house, sohe poked his head around just to there.
Yeah, it's what it ran afterthem, but they were on like
an ATV. Oh shit. So, yeah, he had been told earlier
in the day that one was around, but he kind of shrugged it off.
So as they arrived, it wasthere and it went after him.
(27:08):
It attacked Elijah, and there's nota lot of detail given once again on
like how the attack went, whatexactly happened, like how it attacked him,
or why it stopped. But afterit attacked him, it went after
his partner. And Elijah was onthe ground at this point and he was
just basically stuck there watching the polarbear rip apart his partner. He somehow
(27:29):
managed to stand up after being mulledby a polar bear and tried to go
over to help his partner, butthe bear went after him again, and
he tried to run around his ATV. It did not work, So he
said, this second attack, hecould hear its body parts go into him,
like he could feel its teeth punchingthrough his flesh and here it's pulling
(27:51):
at his hair and scalp off.It let him go and then started approaching
the other two again. It attackedhim three times in between attacked the other
So this bear really just did notlike him. I don't know what it
is, but basically at one ofthe time, after one of the times
he was attacked, he started toblack out, but was still trying to
(28:11):
distract the bear from attacking the otherwoman that was there. So his partner's
sister in law. Yeah, andhe said a similar thing to other people
that we've talked about who've been attackedby bears, like basically, feel them
piercing through you, but you don'tfeel a lot of the pain associated with
you in shock and exactly, yeah, because he was just focused on trying
to help the other two because hesaid they all have children and grandkids too.
(28:33):
You know. The bear came downon him one last time and he
felt its tooth go into his eye. Oh no, that is the worst
I can possibly imagine. I havean iphobia. And he said it must
have. It must have opened itsmouth and bit him on the neck because
he just blocked out. Oh yeah, so it's joh, went from like
(28:53):
his eyeball through his neck. Yeah. So he said after that, there
was just silence. He couldn't hearanything. So obviously this is after he
comes to you after being bitten inthe neck and the eyeball by a bear,
a polar bear the biggest bear thereis the largest land predator in the
world. And he said he couldn'thear anything. Yeah, and he basically
(29:14):
thought, oh, the other twoare dead obviously, yeah, But then
he heard a voice. It wasthe local reverend's wife happened to pass by,
and he raised his hand and shoutedthat he was all right and yeah,
and his partner called out that shewas also alive. So he was
like thrilled that they at least twoof them were okay, you know,
(29:37):
because it could have been a lotworse. So he said what happened next
was a blur, but essentially herealized that the next time he was conscious,
he was at like a health center, so they weren't very close to
a hospital. Then he blacked outagain and the next thing he remembers was
getting medveacked to eke liwitch alwit.Oh boy, it's i q A l
(29:59):
u I t. He said,you know, as he's being shifted between
all these places, he was justgoing in out of consciousness, and from
there he was taken to Ottawa.Okay, got that one, I know
what that's what that is. Andhe said that the other two remained behind
and Ikal the police then said thatthe bear was found dead near the cabin
and they don't know how. Nomembers of the community like bended together and
(30:21):
shot and killed it. Yeah,But what I don't understand is like did
the reverend's wife kill it and thenthey were rescued, Like that's the part
that's unclear. They would have hadto kill it, right, I don't
know immediately, We don't know whenthe bear left them, Like maybe he
was gonna come back the later dbecause you said they already had a carcass
that it left to go attack them. So maybe it went back to the
carcass and left their bodies there asthey were bleeding out, and the reverend's
(30:45):
like, oh shit, or theweabond's wife is like okay, when need
to get help, and everyone cameout with their guns and was like,
hey, let's go fuck up thisbear. Yeah, Elijah says afterwards.
I had this mindset where animals aren'tferal, they're not scary. If you
don't bother them, they will notbother you. I decided to go.
Look, if I didn't go,the bear wouldn't have seen me. That
is how it happened from what I'vegleaned. Basically, a lot of these
(31:07):
attacks happen when people try to approachthese like in any sort of way,
try to approach these bears. Becausethere's someone I forget where I read it,
but someone else was saying tourists arebecoming more of a thing up there
in the Arctic Circle because people wantto see polar bears, which makes sense
because they're so cool. And Iexperienced this when I went to Yellstone.
I'm sure you experienced it in Yosemite. People see bears and they're like,
(31:30):
let me get close to it andtake a picture with it or of it.
You're making a face because you've absolutelydone this. We're not going to
take you to the Arctic Circle.So where a lot of these incidents happen
is where tourists are like, oh, pull the bear and go to run
up and take pictures of it orwith it, and the bears like,
I'll literally bite your head off.And that's kind of what's happening. I
(31:51):
mean, obviously, we just talkedabout people who like lived in the well
the last three people lived there.Yeah, but even the first ones then
really go out searching for a bear. The bear came to their camp,
No, and what was awkward inthe Horatio case, Like the first story
that we talked about was they wereexcited to see polar bears and that next
day they were going to go likelooking for them, but they weren't a
glacier so that they had plenty ofspace, but they definitely wanted to see
(32:15):
them. And then one find out. Those are our four stories, but
at least in the last one everyonesurvived and kind of learned a lesson,
I guess, but which is don'tpoke your head around house still look for
a bear. Yeah, don't lookat them, just keep walking to them.
Yeah, just ignore them. Imean it just it sucks because we
(32:37):
want to save polar bears, butit seems they're extremely deadly. Yeah.
Yeah, if you're a patron ofours at the five or fifteen dollars level,
you can hear all about that rightnow in our interview with Danielle,
and if not, you will getit next Wednesday. But other than that,
I think that's a good stopping pointfor us. Yeah, I mean,
will definitely be a get into alot of stuff during an interview,
(33:00):
some interesting stuff to go over.These animals are scary, yeah, which
seems to be a common theme withall of our animal attack stories. Animals
are scary. Yeah, pretty much. Every time we have an episode come
out, someone in my life islike, I have a new phobia of
this animal that I didn't know wassupposed to be deadly like beavers. So
many people were like, I don'tever want to see a beaver again.
(33:20):
They're fat, man, Like Iwoul't want to fuck with the beaver in
the first place. Like, yeah, im yeah, anyways, that's all
I got. Do you have anyfinishing notes on polar bears? I feel
like you're not as hyped as youshould be for talking about a bear.
I fucking love bears. Like we'vebeen we've been going through the process here
of like going through stories and theeverything them trying na to freak out too
(33:42):
much. One thing I want totalk about. Well, first of all,
let's backtrack. Where do you stand, like, on a list of
your favorite bears? Where do polarbears land fourth? Wow? Yeah,
give us your list, Black Bear, grizzly bear, what keep on?
What's number three? It is?Really they're fucking adorable, are so fucking
(34:04):
I would have thought that you wouldhave loved polar bears because they're like massive,
and which is why I love theKodayak grizzly Bear because it is absolutely
ridiculously large. Black bear is yourfavorite. I think they're cute and stupid.
I feel like I can pretty Ifeel like I could cuddle one,
you know, like, Yeah,I mean like I'm not saying. I'm
not saying I'm right. I'm justlike I feel that way. I'm not
(34:25):
that my opinions, Ashley, Isay you were, I live in black
Bear country. That's it's something thatyou know. It's it's like a they
gets got a home field advantage inmy in my heart. Okay, good
to know. Yeah, I reallywould have thought polar Bears would have ring
tired. But it's a it's acompetitive list. Yeah, it's really not
fair, I understand. So,I mean brown Bears didn't make it,
(34:46):
and so I guess grizzly is kindof a form of brown Bear. Yeah.
Do you want to talk about Pisley'sNo, why, I don't know
enough. I mean, all youhave to say is that polar Bears and
grizzly Bears sometimes get it on.Well, yeah, their range doesn't overlap
(35:07):
a whole bunch, but I guessthey can hybridize. I don't know.
I don't think their offspring are fertilethough, which is a common thing with
hybrids, Like mules can have babies, they do it, which is wild.
Yeah. Also, this has nothingto do with anything that we're talking
about. Well besides animals. Didyou know that California condors they just found
that they can sexually reproduce. Idid know this because you told me.
(35:28):
Okay, we were together when Ifound out. Huh yeah, oh yeah,
I forgot. We're together a lot. But yeah, if you didn't
know and hear the news California condors, it was just found that one Actually
it was a long time ago.They were going through a data set and
we're doing some DNA testing and foundthat some eggs that had hatched had no
father. They were just entire TheDNA was exactly from the mom, which
(35:50):
is bananas. And I guess it'sbeen found before in like turkeys and chickens
and stuff, but never in asuper endangered bird, which is really cool.
Yeah. So now hopefully use thatin some way to get the numbers
back up. Yeah, but Californiacondors are doing pretty good good. Yeah,
yeah, I know that they're prettypretty popular in Arizona right now,
So that's always good to see.It's another animal I almost worked with.
(36:13):
Yeah, you almost did. Yeah, and then the pandemic happened again.
Yeah, and you didn't want tocome visit me in California, all right.
Cool. So it's been a greatepisode, folks. This is the
last one forever. Yeah, forever. Thank you so much for listening to
episode thirteen of Ghetto Live. Ifyou are a patron, you can get
episode thirteen point five right now,and if not, you can get it
(36:34):
next week. But either way,thanks. Hey, you guys are getting
three episodes three weeks in a row. Yeah, yeah, so we're back
to old schedule more or less madeit less for about a month, and
we're about at I Yeah, Ihave a very intensive new job that I
can't make an episode every week withor else side have no hair, which
was kind of also the reason wegot to go to two weeks my job,
(36:58):
Like, oh yeah that too.Yeah yeah. So anyways, thanks
for listening. Join us on patreondot com slash get out Alive and you
can get all the good fun stuffour fifteen dollars a month members just got
their gifts in the mail. Ilove to see pictures of people with the
things that we send them. It'sreally weird. It is weird. It's
really weird, like seeing my handwritingwith someone I've never met before feels weird,
(37:20):
but also I love it so much. So thank you so much for
that. To see the information andlinks for this episode, you can check
out the episode description below, orcheck out our website get at a Live
podcast dot com. You can rateus on Apple Podcasts and subscribe wherever you're
listening. You can follow us onInstagram I get out a Live pod,
and we also have a Facebook page, which I think is just get out
a Live Podcast. I think so. I haven't actually looked at it.
(37:42):
Yeah, I'll for it a longtime. That's where Nick will respond to
your questions and concerns and comments ifwe actually see it. I see them,
Oh, there we go. Ifas she tells me, I will
respond yeah. So. You canalso follow me on Twitter at the Angryologist
Nick Nope cool. So thank youto my second grade husband and best friend,
Josh Walsh for making our intro music. And we will see you either
(38:05):
right now for the second installment ofthis episode, or next week for our
interview with Danielle
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